10 Comics to Watch: Garfunkel & Oates

Lindhome, Micucci's songs land them on Leno

Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci, of the comedy music duo Garfunkel and Oates, learned last year they had a new fan: Oates.

“He sent a MySpace message that read, ‘I saw you’re using my name. Luckily, I think you’re funny, and you can use it if I get free beer at your shows. Wanna jam sometime?’?” Lindhome recites.

And just like that, they’re onstage with John Oates last July, Lindhome performing a striptease and Micucci trumpet soloing to “Maneater.”

With Lindhome on guitar and Micucci playing her ukulele, the duo write comical songs, perform them from the couch and upload the webcam feed to the Internet.

It’s all very DIY (Lindhome admits early footage is grainy because she was exporting the video all wrong), and topics range from the autobiographical to the downright silly, like “Pregnant Women Are Smug” and the “Lost”-inspired “Why Isn’t There More Fucking on This Island?”

During their monthly live shows at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in Los Angeles, the group performs on a Mr. Rogers-style living room set, featuring storytelling and guest appearances from puppets.

The women are regulars on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” and their brazen pro-gay rights tune “Sex With Ducks” went viral, getting play from many news outlets, including “The O’Reilly Factor.”

In recent months, Garfunkel and Oates have beefed up their tour schedule, and they’re shopping around a musical TV show, a la “Flight of the Conchords.”

“I had to get used to singing about subjects I wouldn’t normally sing about,” thanks to the increased exposure, Micucci says. The first time she dropped an F-bomb publicly, ever, was in the sweeter-than-it-sounds ballad “Fuck You.”

But the girls embolden one another. They first hit it off four years ago in the UCB-LA lobby. (“We were both on bad dates,” they say almost simultaneously.) In 2008, Lindhome invited Micucci to co-write songs for her short film “Imaginary Larry.” They breezed through three in two hours and still make time, despite active solo acting careers — Lindhome appears in the forthcoming “A Good Funeral,” while Micucci and her ukulele recurred on “Scrubs.”